I have a Galaxy Nexus, and I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but I find Flash works pretty well on the device.
Granted, I only use it for video content on sites like the BBC, but the underlying functionality is fine.
I don't think Flash has a future on mobile devices, but HTML5-based solutions aren't up to scratch for general use yet, so I don't think Adobe should throw in the towel just yet.
Agreed as well. I often make use of Flash on both my tablet and my Nexus One. The times I notice it most is when I'm using the new Firefox Mobile and I have to copy the URL and paste it into the stock browser to get to flash content. That tedious process makes me realize I do it a lot more than I expected I would. I am very very disappointed by this decision.
Sure this is a temporary inconvenience, but you're just feeling the growing pains of the web leaving behind flash (yes everywhere, not just mobile) which simplifies the space and long-term is a good thing for developers and consumers of web content.
The real problem is that most developers have to build with mobile in mind. Android tablets (and phones) running Chrome will be great. Apple has sold 55 million iPads and the rate will increase. We're going to have a billion mobile devices that won't run Flash in 2-3 years.
Yes, Flash can still do stuff that HTML5 can't, but it really doesn't matter.
My experience is that Flash executes fine, but it's awful for touchscreens - dragging, zooming, and clicking get all muddied up within the context of a Flash plugin rectangle.
Genuinely curious. It's probably been over a year since I've needed to reach for a PC for a Flash site (then again, "apps" have filled many of those use-case gaps).
Same experience -- Flash works close to perfectly on my Galaxy S II.
This isn't a technology move, however, but rather is a revenue move: Adobe makes no money from Flash, but instead makes money from authoring tools. The lack of an iOS target is killing the authoring tools on the Flash side (who would build a new site or delivery mechanism using Flash when you know it cuts out a huge portion of the market?). So Adobe is refocusing on HTML5 tools.
Even though Flash is useful today, Google doesn't want to inherit the cost and risk of developing it on mobile so....no more Flash.
Flash is the new Internet Explorer. I remember a point in time when it was painful to use browsers other than IE, because so many developers took the easy way out and only supported IE (and their managers didn't know/care). Those days are of course over (well, mostly at least).
Flash is, or at least used to be, the easy way out. People used it because it was easier than HTML5. Hence, when a company asks for a quote on an interactive site they often went for the Flash-version because it was cheaper (and not fully knowing the drawbacks).
Apple forced a change in the market. All of the sudden, these people who ordered the new project in Flash realized that they couldn't view the content on their shiny new toy.
You might argue the ability of using Flash as an option. I see the fact that both Apple (and now Google) have actively taken a stance against Flash as something good for the society as a whole. It's a step towards better, and more open standards.
This isn't to say that Flash is completely useless. Not too long ago, it wasn't even possible to do interactive things with HTML. At that point, Flash was the only option. Luckily, those days are over.
> People who used it because it was easier than HTML5.
Having developed both HTML5 and Flash applications, your use of the word was shows a bit of ignorance when it comes to Flash. It is still easier in Flash to do a high-velocity, interactive site that works across multiple browsers. If you think differently, you're not actually doing the work.
Armchair critics of Flash just regurgitate what they perceive is truth – HTML5's abilities are on par with Flash. But it isn't true. To be clear, my support is with HTML5, not Flash. But as someone who works with both daily, I'd be pretty biased if I went around telling people that HTML5 is a trouble-free alternative to Flash. That would be a pretty big lie.
> Luckily, those days are over.
They are far from over. People cite YouTube HTML5 player without considering how vlogs are actually recorded, processed and uploaded through Flash. As the viewer, it's a nice luxury to say it can all be done through HTML5, but as a producer of content you'd have a different opinion. We all know about Web Audio API[1] and Capture API[2]. No need to mention how they are X years away. They aren't here today.
I interpreted the was to mean it was an option. Flash used to be the easiest option. Now with the runtime not being present on apple devices and it's total demise imminent, it's still just as easy to use but it's no longer a viable option.
If you're an iOS user, HTML5 is a magical place where you can do anything – outside of iOS, it's hit or miss. And if it's hit or miss, it might as well be Flash.
Remember that a client's perspective is often neat, cool and fun rather than works on all devices the exact same.
Flash will die when HTML5 signs the cheques that it's collective evangelicals cash.
Can you expand about what is neat with HTML(5) on ios? personally the only thing I saw was desolation and poor performance. I rarely saw anything neat cool and fun in html5 for ios..
I surely missed something I guess. I think it's a shame we are not going to have flash on android tablets, it's somewhere it could have perform well.
I agree. Problem is, this Flash vs. HTML5 rhetoric has people mixing in "it can do everything Flash does" and "Flash doesn't work on mobile" leading the implication that if you want to do an elaborate, highly interactive experience, it'll work on mobile and it'll be better than Flash. You see how self-serving that argument is?
They are far from over. People cite YouTube HTML5 player without considering how vlogs are actually recorded, processed and uploaded through Flash. As the viewer, it's a nice luxury to say it can all be done through HTML5, but as a producer of content you'd have a different opinion.
Huh? How many vlogs are "actually recorded, processed and uploaded through Flash"?
I don't think many people, and certainly not many professional vlogers, use a Flash based vlog recording and processing solution. (Including both the Adobe Flash authoring environment/flv encoding tools AND any bizarro online flash vlog recording service which uses the computer's camera).
In YT's early days it was mostly people recording vlongs and responses from their webcam. YouTube. Get it? Certainly professional vloggers would rather use a nicely cut, professionally edited version. But that doesn't represent the majority of YT users. That bizarro world you talk about is the underpinnings of YT's critical mass.
1) People did produce vlogs and responses from their webcam. You got that right. But this has nothing to do with Flash, and it's ability to use the webcam on a flash app. People making vlogs with their webcam just used one of several commercial video apps to create them, not some flash page.
2) I seriously doubt vlogs were "the underpinnings of YT's critical mass". YT got popular because of its videos (of cats, songs, babes, funny stuff, etc), not because of video blogging or the NUMA guy.
> People did produce vlogs and responses from their webcam. You got that right. But this has nothing to do with Flash
It has everything to do with Flash. Flash was the only reliable way to record via webcam and have it instantly available. I say that it contributed to YT's critical mass because YT made it easy for anyone to record and upload. No crappy bundled webcam software could beat that. YT didn't need to explain it. No "if you have this webcam, use this software" or "open Quicktime and export as a .mpg, then..." BS. Record, hit stop, hit upload. Done.
> I seriously doubt vlogs were "the underpinnings of YT's critical mass". YT got popular because of its videos (of cats, songs, babes, funny stuff, etc)
You have to respect that YT is a community, one with a pretty significant voice. Type in "sopa", "war in iraq", or "arab spring" and see how many cat videos you get. Video sites were already around - a video site you could contribute your voice to - that's what made YT a success.
It has everything to do with Flash. Flash was the only reliable way to record via webcam and have it instantly available.
Citation needed. I don't know of ANY remotely popular flash vlog recording service of the time. Not to mention that vlogs in general never got that popular, period.
You have to respect that YT is a community, one with a pretty significant voice. Type in "sopa", "war in iraq", or "arab spring" and see how many cat videos you get.
YT is not a community at all. It has tens of millions of extremely diverse members. You can find any kind of shit in YT, from democratic, to republican, to anarchistic, to pro-nazi, to various nationalisms, to kittens, to porn, to full length movies, to ads, to high culture, to fart jokes, ... What part seems like a specific community with a voice to you? It's just the assemblage of millions of individual tastes and opinions.
The fact you can find things about sopa, war in iraq, arab spring etc does not mean anything of the sort of YT being a "community" with a "voice".
It's like finding emails and blog posts about such issues: of course you will, there are millions of bloggers, thousands of them are bound to write about the issues of the day.
> You might argue the ability of using Flash as an option. I see the fact that both Apple (and now Google have) actively taken a stance against Flash as something good for the society as a whole. It's a step towards better, and more open standards.
If only Apple took the same stance regarding video codecs, too, and embrace WebM. But the truth is they support what is convenient for them at the time. If it also happens to help the society in the long term - great. But it's not their main priority.
Yeah, you're right. Apple isn't only killing Flash because it is good for the society. They're doing it because the user experience would suffer. That isn't the case with video codecs unfortunately, but it would have been great if Apple did embrace WebM, but I don't see that happening in a near future.
Hats off to Apple. They managed to take a technology that was entrenched as a standard and kill it simply by refusing to support it on their mobile platform.
For years people have been complaining about the lack of IOS flash support, but the true impact has been to hasten the move to HTML5 and to kill a proprietary, bloated, bug-filled technology.
I honestly don't think Apple set out to kill flash. They just chose to not support Flash, like they also don't support a bunch of other browser plugins. All of them, in fact.
Had others not made such a big fuss about it, Apple's mobile devices would simply silently not support Flash. But everybody made such a big stink about it so they had to vocally explain their motivations for not supporting Flash specifically, making Apple some kind of Flash opponent.
For years (even after iPhone shipped) Adobe only had "Flash Lite" to offer, and allowed it to lag many versions behind desktop version (e.g. Opera on Wii had trouble when YouTube started dropping support for Flash 7 and Adobe simply didn't have anything more modern available in "Devices SDK").
Google could have implemented it. Firefox Mobile Nightly (which is essentially a completely different browser from the currently-shipping Firefox Mobile), for example, implements the necessary support to run Flash on Ice Cream Sandwich and on Gingerbread and below. It's just a matter of exposing the plugin hooks.
two nitpicks: one, they're still supporting you developing mobile apps with Flash. two, they seemed to be hinting that their partners (i.e. Google in this case) would be allowed to take over development if they wished to. It seems Google don't want to (can't link directly to the relevant answer but search this page for Flash):
Anytime there was a post about firefox mobile on /r/reddit, folk came out of the woodwork saying they would never even consider using it until it supported flash. (Which, interestingly, it now does.)
I have no fucking idea what people find attractive about mobile flash (maybe games?) but it certainly seems to be a thing.
You are wrong. Html5 for Youtube is still an opt-in trial, unless you are on a platform without flash.
As for related sites, while most I frequent seem to keep their files in .mp4 format rather than .flv the players are all flash based. Probably because it's easier to serve ads.
Heh, that's a good point. Though most restaurant sites are so useless even on a computer that I don't bother visiting them -- I just check the hours/# on one of the review sites like Yelp.
In recent times most local places I care about have put up Facebook pages with easy to find info.
I will be sad to see no flash support. I mostly use it for gaming on my tablet and galaxy s II and have had absolutely no issues. My mom got a transformer for Christmas and has been able to play all of her Facebook games (90% of her internet usage). It is really a bad move that directly affects ppl like my mom and other casual gamers.
As someone who works with both Flash and HTML5, this news makes me sad.
Flash just works for much better. There are no cross-browser issues (except those that don't support it at all -- thanks, Apple). And ActionScript is a better language for building complex apps than JavaScript.
The main problem with Flash is that it's completely proprietary, and therefore, as 4chan would say, OH EXPLOITABLE.
Worse is the fact that Adobe has been sitting with their thumbs wedged in their arses for months, in some cases, while known vulnerabilities were being exploited in the wild.
It's hard to imagine a better argument for moving away from closed technologies like this.
I find it disappointing that Adobe has complete control over the Flash/mobile-media market in this regard. Flash is great in all, but leaving up the choice to Adobe seems counter-intuitive, especially when the browser will most likely be widely used.
The flash format is open source now. It happened a few years ago.
Anyone can build their own flash player, even for mobile.
What folks are commenting on is Adobes not releasing an official player for the mobile. Desktop isn't going anywhere because it plays AIR/Flex apps which also have been open sourced.
Can't wait for Adobe's HTML5 authoring tools to come out with their HTML5 acquisitions.
Until then, HTML5 is still becoming more performant when building immersive environments in it, which Flash already kind of does in mobile. Guess we'll have a few years of toughing it out until then.
Flash may be owned but it is released as open source. The language is completely open, there is an open source compiler and an open source VM.
HTML5, as it is, is a pain in the butt because of multiple vendors supporting subsets of it. I still have to fall back to flash to play mp3s in Firefox.
HTML5 will be great someday, but it's not today and probably not soon.
The battery argument is just silly. Playing HD movies on a phone will suck battery faster but we don't remove the user's ability to do that.
As for the others, I use Flash frequently on my phone and none of them have occurred for me in the last year or so. I have Flash set to load on demand. It's not about Flash being the future (it's not), or even continued development in it. It's about access to existing content here and now and for some users that is a continued need.
Edit: One quick edit since HN doesn't seem to want to let me reply to the below. I think the crux of it is that it removes the option to access content... key word option. If it's not the default, etc, that's fine... but you're placing the disadvantages of Flash over my ability to get to content I feel is important. The "no Flash for you" argument hinges on saying "our opinion that Flash is bad is more important than your opinion that you want to see the content you desire, even if it's not available in other formats". And for the users like myself that like to retain that option, we feel very strongly the other way.
> The battery argument is just silly. Playing HD movies on a phone will suck battery faster but we don't remove the user's ability to do that.
If you could watch HD movies in a different way that didn't use as much battery, we would. Much of the stuff Flash does doesn't need to suck down the battery life of a phone if done in HTML5.
I agree, most of the arguments from individuals I've seen against Flash are simply, "I don't like it therefore I want to stop others from using it".
I find it interesting that one of the leading arguments against Flash is that it's a proprietary plugin that is not "open". So clearly the solution to this is to close off the option of using it, doesn't seem like a very "open" attitude. I thought it was about choice but I guess it was wrong.
If you are referring to them not allowing the plugin to work inside their browser for iOS then I agree, it is different. I have no problem with that choice that they made, it's their system. But, it was possible to build apps for iOS that used Flash development tools and Apple directly put a stop to it. Therefore, they did put some work into that aspect even though all it amounted to was changing the EULA and banning apps from the app store. In my opinion that was an effort to prevent development tools they did not control from entering their market; that's not an "open" attitude.
But, anyway, I wasn't referring to Apple in my comment. I was referring to individuals who present the argument I described; people who are all for "open" as long as it involves software they want you to use.
disagree. flash is often used for other content that may equally suck battery just as badly. Sometimes when I visit techcrunch on my laptop, one of the badly written flash ads causes my processor fan to crank on... when I close the tab the problem goes away. How does one explain that?
The problem is I watch the movies when I want to watch them. Flash is embedded in random. You can always have click-to-flash solutions but those are usually buggy and there are other solid arguments in the list.
Flash does not use any battery power at all, except when you choose to use a flash based application.
The stock Android browser has the option to load plugins on demand. That is: no flash application is loaded within the browser until you click on the application to enable it. The same is true for memory usage or bugs.
I don't think there are any advantages a browser without flash has over one that supports it.
A great many webpages have Flash adverts, so if you're browsing news sites, etc, normal sites that people do browse, you will probably end up being served Flash and so your battery will drain.
Again: not a single one of these adverts will load when you visit your website. You will see grey boxes with an icon on Android, similar to what you see on iOS. There is no flash running that could drain battery.
On-demand flash support means that you can touch one of these grey boxes, and only then will flash load and execute the application.
Wrong. We should limit the number of attack vectors as much as possible. Flash has a horrific security track record. Firefox and Chrome are pretty solid.
Funny, almost all of my software that connects to the internet gets security updates. Granted the browsers may be more solid on security than Flash is, but still, reducing attack vectors does include security updates.
"Flash allow you to create any kind of interface and experience you want."
Exactly, and that's the problem. It means that it behaves the way the author wants it to, ignoring the users preferences. That is poor usability. I have lots of small annoyances with Flash, take for example the inability to auto-scroll across it (at least in Firefox on OS X). This would not be the case with normal content.
With Flash, the user or the developer has no choice if scroll and keyboard shortcuts break. With JS+HTML+CSS, the user has a choice to force the developer to fix their code (and a developer to not write code which breaks browser stuff).
In Flash, browser shortcuts like ^L are always broken and you have no choice about that, because that's the way Flash is designed. If a similar thing happens in a non-Flash environment, it's because the developer designed it so.
If many users complain to the developer about stuff being broken, it has to count for something.
Again, how do they "force" developers to fix their code? Asking nicely is one thing but forcing is another. You implied that the user has more control over the developer in a JS+HTML+CSS environment over Flash. Plus, if some commonly used commands are broken in Flash then it's broken in all of them which doesn't mean broken; it means unsupported, there's a difference.
I agree, but as another poster said, the technology simply isn't there.
I haven't tested an iPhone 4S yet, but I did develop some javascript canvas based animations for some time, and the performance was extremely poor. The old benchmark I used was http://themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/ I believe, and I have yet to see HTML outperform flash on it.
Hardware acceleration for Canvas and SVG makes a huge difference in this case.
Firefox 4+ (Windows Vista/7), IE9+ (Windows Vista/7), Chrome(I forget which version)+ (All Windows, Mac Soon), and Safari 5+ (OSX) all support hardware acceleration of Canvas.
Opera development builds support hardware acceleration too.
Chrome Beta on Android supports hardware acceleration of Canvas.
iPhone 4S also supports hardware acceleration of Canvas.
Hardware accelerated Canvas completely destroys Flash on the Desktop.
A lot has changed in `~2 years
Not to mention that modern JS engines outperform even statically typed AS3 code.
Of course, if you don't have a supported graphics card for your computer, you won't get hardware acceleration.
However, I imagine this won't be a problem on Mobile once Android 4.0 eclipses other versions of Android since Hardware acceleration is a standard Android 4.0 feature.
I agree too (though I can't remember the last time I myself had to use Flash on my phone); but it doesn't feel like an entirely unreasonable argument for not supporting Flash.
As much as I'd like to see HTML5 pushed for interactive content, it's not there yet. I can tell whenever Youtube gives me the HTML player because everything breaks. Apple's webplayer is even worse. I think the only good experience I've had with an HTML5 video player is on The Verge, and half the comments complain about it so it probably just works well on Chrome.
I think Flash still has a place in the current web, while we work on getting HTML up to snuff.
Fortunately iOS already did most of this on its own.
By pushing everyone to apps? iOS is no shepherd in the movement to standardized, cross-platform solutions. It is probably the greatest setback the open web has faced in over a decade.
Apple's original plan was that third-party stuff would be in web app form. They took tons of flak from the developer community over that, so no, they didn't "push everyone to apps".
And webkit derived from KHTML (loosely), the project coming to public attention as Apple came under criticism for taking but not giving.
Apple's original plan
And Google's original plan was don't be evil. I would never -- even if I ever got some screwed up idea that I need to defend a corporation online -- reference that to defend their honour.
Kind of hard to believe, given that iOS was and still is the only mobile OS with a browser that does not suck. Even Android has only been catching up. iOS and Android have been an unambiguous blessing for the open web on mobile devices.
I don't even understand what you want Apple to do. Not allow third party developers to make native apps for iOS? Apple did that and nobody liked it. I can't imagine that you think this is a realistic solution.
> I don't even understand what you want Apple to do. Not allow third party developers to make native apps for iOS? Apple did that and nobody liked it. I can't imagine that you think this is a realistic solution.
Here's the chain of events as I see it:
1) Apple decides not to support flash.
2) A lot of people get upset.
3) Apple releases their thoughts on flash[1] which revolves around flash being proprietary and HTML5 being an open solution. [1]http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
4) Content owners can't delivery video through HTML5 because it's not DRM.
5) Apple works with content owners (specifically ABC) to create native iOS apps. Native apps on other platforms come way later, if ever.
6) HTML5 still doesn't have a solution for DRM content. Apple isn't working on this problem.
Basically they said one thing and then did another.
Big studio video content accounts for the vast majority of video streamed over the internet. Apple did not ignore DRM on their own platform; they have it, they encouraged big studios to use it (and they did, happily), they just ignored the cross-platform part. Which would be perfectly fine had they not released their "Thoughts on Flash" piece saying the exact opposite.
Kind of hard to believe, given that iOS was and still is the only mobile OS with a browser that does not suck.
Yeah, I see John Gruber likes to say that.
It is, so to speak, horse shit. I apologize for the language but it's all that satisfactorily delivers my opinion on that. Have you ever actually used the Android browser?
Yes, and it sucked. I have been quite happy with the browser that comes with ICS, so I would say there's parity now. But nice job ignoring the actual point I was making.
The point you were making was that the iOS browser is so superior to its competitors that it demonstrated Apple's commitment to the web.
Only the Android browser doesn't actually suck. I've never, ever heard someone actually describe why it sucks, they just repeat that going meme and smile and nod at each other. Yet despite all of its CSS chrome, many mobile dev projects abandon the effort and switch to an app after facing the less sexy, but deadly deficiencies in the iOS browser.
People are sure the iOS browser is great because they never actually use it. Instead they use apps.
"People are sure the iOS browser is great because they never actually use it. Instead they use apps."
I agree with some of your points, but as far as I'm aware every article I've seen on the subject points to iOS devices accounting for a large majority of mobile web browsing, so clearly a lot people don't think it sucks.
My personal experience using the Galaxy Nexus default browser for the last 2 months has been:
1. A bit more overall studdering when scrolling webpages than my iPhone. Nothing dramatic, but noticeable.
2. Double tap to zoom on paragraphs of text is really hit or miss. Half the time it zooms in incorrectly cutting off the edges of the text.
3. Embedded videos on a lot of websites refuse to play and prompt me to install Flash. On iOS they just serve up the html5 version and pay.
Overall I never found the default browser to be absolutely terrible, but I didn't love it either. Chrome beta has been a big step up in the last 24hrs already and am hoping this is where Google is set to put it's energy.
Huh? Why are you so sure that people don't use the iOS browser?
I use an RSS reader and the Twitter app (both pf which I also use on my PC). The rest (and majority of my time) on iOS devices I spend in a browser and I love it. The web experience on my iPad is awesome. I just don't see how Apple is hindering or sabotaging the open web with iOS. Sure, people like apps, but that's not unique to iOS, that's also true for Android. It's a property of native apps, not a property of Apple pushing native apps.
There will always be native code in one form or another. It used to be Windows applications now it is iOS apps. The web will coexist and thrive in parallell to this.
To be honest, after I had used iPhone for a while I preferred the flash-less web so much that I also disabled the plugin on my computer. I haven't really missed it at all, and the web experience has been much better for me.
Because half the Flash "enabled" pages I load on my Android phone end up crashed, lagging, or completely borking the touch controls. About the only thing Flash ever works for on my phone are simple ads or video players (with unresponsive playback controls).
That said, not wanting to use something is certainly a fine reason to not want it installed. For example, I don't want to use closed media formats. I also don't want others to use closed media formats because I believe it to be detrimental to long term archival and sharing.
Granted, I only use it for video content on sites like the BBC, but the underlying functionality is fine.
I don't think Flash has a future on mobile devices, but HTML5-based solutions aren't up to scratch for general use yet, so I don't think Adobe should throw in the towel just yet.